The Pearl
by Elisabeth Harker
Summary: Jo finds a periodical of the most scandalous nature tucked into one of Laurie's university texts.


Disclaimer: I don't own Jo, Laurie, Beth, or any one else. "The Pearl" was a real Victorian men's magazine. I read some stories from it once, and it was quite disturbing.

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Laurie stood at the door of the March home, facing an even more than usually awkward Beth, and wondering what on earth is going on.

"Jo says you are not to come in," She explained for about the fifth time. She looked away from him, obviously confused, and perhaps even ashamed at denying him entrance. This at least was a good sign, though it did not address the root of the problem. Beth, he knew, would relent soon enough, but Jo not wanting him near was source enough of worry to keep him from basking in the glow of that one, small, silver lining.

"If she won't even tell you what's the matter, then there's no sense in keeping me out. Let me through, gatekeeper, and I promise to pass the source of her distress on to you as soon as I've remedied it."

"That she doesn't tell me is what worries me," mused thoughtful little Beth. "It isn't like her to change so quickly, and not say a word about it. Why, only this morning..." Beth stopped abruptly, for with Jo being so secretive all of a sudden, she could not help but feel that any confidence bestowed upon the Laurence boy was some form of betrayal, even if it was quite beyond her to try and understand it.

"Yes...?" Laurie encouraged gently.

"She was saying only this morning that she was looking forward to going skating with you today," Beth continued.

Her voice was getting quieter by the minute, and it seemed to Laurie that she would shrink away into the wall if he allowed it. Well, that much at least was typical of Beth, and he knew from much practice and time spent at the March house what it took to draw conversation from her, and fully intended to do so to the best of his ability.

"When did she begin acting strange?" He asked, gently, for it was impossible not to be gentle with the mouse of the March family.

"She didn't. She was in the garret all day, but that isn't unusual. She said...well, she did say something about how you shouldn't leave your school bag lying about."

Laurie pursed his lips at this. Jo had expressly asked for access to his Harvard texts, and he always gave them over whenever it pleased her to look into them. More often than not the idea of her delving into his thick chemistry books and business ledgers amused him to no end, though he would never say such a thing to her face.

Oh well. He'd get to the bottom of this if he needed to spend the entire day unraveling it, and at least the discarded school bag gave him the window of opportunity he needed.

"There! You can't keep me out now!" He said, too loudly, from Beth's startled expression. "I

can hardly return to Harvard on Monday without having done my homework, and as my homework is in Jo's possession, I'll have to see her."

With that he breezed past Beth, something which he could have done at any time, for she was not the sort to physically block his path once he decided on it. He wouldn't have done it though, and he was thankful that he'd found some way to add legitimacy to his investigation.

He ascended the steps to the attic two at a time, and he was not surprised to find the door shut tightly, though he was to discover that it was locked.

"If that's you, Laurie, you had better go away now," Came an unmistakable, muffled voice from the other side.

"How are you to know that I'm not Marmee, come in to make sure that you eat between all of the writing you do up there?" He asked.

"For one thing, you don't sound a bit like her. For another, I haven't been writing."

"Well, you were ready to kick me out, without even stopping to listen to my voice," Laurie said, half a smile appearing on his face even through his worry, as he thought about how strange things could be with Jo, and how he would probably never find himself having conversations through a keyhole with any other girl. "Why don't you tell me what you've been doing?"

"Reading."

"About the spiritual benefits of making your boy miserable?"

"You've brought it on yourself."

"And how, pray tell, have I done that? By making friends with the most contrary girl in all of Concord, and allowing her to browbeat me without any explanation or reason?"

"I can't do any sort of beating through a door. Now, home with you! At once."

Laurie did not go home at once, nor did he deem fit to answer her. Instead, he sat down by the door, and waited.

And waited.

Ten minutes passed, then twenty, and still he waited. Jo couldn't very well stay in there forever, and he was prepared to set up camp if need be, he told himself, becoming crosser by the second.

"I know you're still there," She said finally, "and there's no use pretending that you're not."

"Never intended to."

There was a click of the latch being turned, and then the door opened with such speed that Laurie, who had been leaning against it, nearly fell backwards onto Jo's feet.

"Get in her quickly," She hissed, and as soon as he'd managed to scramble up and inwards, she was locking the door behind him.

"Now," She said, waving what appeared to be a rolled up periodical in his face, "What exactly is _this_?"

At first he didn't know, what with her brandishing it like a weapon so that he couldn't see the title. Then, he caught sight of the letter "P" followed by an "e" and an "a", and even with the rest of the letters obscured, he knew.

That wasn't to say he knew how the damned thing had made its way into his bag, but at least he was well aware of what it was.

"Jo..." He said, scrambling for some explanation that would satisfy her, when genuinely didn't know what the explanation was. "I... it isn't mine. I mean, I didn't put it in my bag. I don't know which of the fellows did it, but I'll... when I find out I'll..."

He wanted to say he would give whichever fellow it was a good thrashing, but he didn't get that far, for Jo had silenced him with an incredulous shake of her head, and was in the process of unrolling the magazine, as if she needed to glance at the cover to remind herself that it really existed, and thus strengthen her resolve against him.

Had he been in school, watching as the other boys played cards, he would not have blushed to see the picture on the cover. It was not that he made a habit of reading such things, but he could not find it in himself to be especially scandalized by it either. Something about watching Jo smooth out the front cover and gaze at the nude image gracing it, and the word "Pearl" written in stylized lettering above it made the heat rise in his face like nothing else could.

"Give me that," He said gruffly, wanting to return it to his bag, or else burn it in short order. "Where did you find it? One of the boys must've put it in my bag as a joke."

"It was tucked up inside your biology text," Jo said. She did not sound quite so angry now, and Laurie hoped to god that she believed him, and that she wouldn't be mad at him once he'd explained himself thoroughly.

"You're the one who brought it on me. It was that...stupid book you gave me. The one with thirty pages on watching the grass grow, of all things! I was determined to finish it, and the fellows made a joke of it, and there you have it. They probably thought I needed to be exposed to some...lighter... forms of literature."

"You said that as if I forced you to read that book," Jo said, taking a seat on the couch, obviously troubled. She had not given him back the magazine, but nor did she look at it. She merely folded and unfolded it in her hands, clearly nervous.

Laurie sighed at that.

"You shouldn't associate with boys who read and think bad things," she said, putting on her best lecturing voice, though he face was still a deep scarlet. "Is it only them who read this sort of thing, or have you tried it as well?"

Now, Laurie had tried it once or twice, and he hadn't much liked it. Somehow, stories of the sort published in that magazine always made him feel unaccountably dirty, for while the other fellows could and did speak freely about the whores and trollops of the world, he couldn't manage it without thinking of the girls back home, and spoiling his fun in that as a result.

Part of him thought it unwise to admit even that much to Jo, but then lying to her would be worse, and so he only said, "On my honor, I've never finished a story on my own accord. The fellows do read them aloud from time to time, though, and I can't pretend I haven't heard."

Jo folded the book in her hands again, before saying, "I'm glad to hear that. Love should be between a man and woman you know…"

Here, her voice wavered in the strangest way, as if she didn't know. She spared a second to glare down at the book in her lap, before continuing: " A man and a woman! Not a man and twelve women, or a man and his daughter, or...or...a man and a woman and a horse whip!"

Laurie knew that it was wrong to laugh at her here, but laugh he did, more out of surprise at the words that had just come out of her mouth than any real sense of humor. A glare from her silenced him, but he couldn't help but think that whomever had planted the magazine in his bag could not have guessed the magnitude of the trap they had laid.

"Just how much of this have you read, Jo?" He said, trying with limited success to sound grave.

"All of it," She said, sullenly. "Don't laugh at me, You know how I am with books, and..."

"Curiosity killed the cat," Laurie put in, cheered somehow by this confession.

"I hope not," She said. "Anyway, I hate to have you off at college and knowing all kinds of things that I don't, and I thought I really ought to read it. Then, once I'd began, I could no more stop than if I'd been watching some sort of great slaughter, and I can't say I feel better about it at any rate."

"It can't be as bad as that," Laurie tried, as Jo folded her arms and glowered. "It is only fiction, no matter the topic. And besides, you read things about thieves, and murderers on a daily basis. You _write_ things about thieves and murderers! This can't be so much worse."

"It's very well that _you_ think this is acceptable," Jo snapped, "but I for one don't."

It had been a long time since Laurie had seen her in such a bad humor, but he had known her long enough to know that there was not much he could do but wait it out. As children their fights had been explosive, but they had had quite a bit of time to grow up since first meeting, and Laurie had learned when not to provoke her as well as she had learned when not to provoke him. There are times, however, when even a theoretical expert on a subject can fail to apply what he knows when particularly pressed by real life concerns; this was just what happened with Laurie, who rather than shutting his mouth and waiting for her to come round, made a dive for the magazine, and snatched it out of her grasp.

"You have it then! When you return to school tomorrow you can take your turn reading it aloud with your friends."

"You're a fine one to talk. Just how long did you spend locked up here reading it from cover to cover?"

With that Jo sprung away from him and went over to seethe by the window. Laurie turned away, and in what should have been an unforgivable act of defiance, opened up the magazine and started to plow through it, though he could hardly concentrate on the words, and only wanted to make amends.

By the time Jo spoke again, Laurie was starting to think that he ought to go back to his grandfather's house without any further word. He'd make a point of not returning to Concord for a few weeks at least, and see if _that_ didn't give Jo cause for regret. Even if she wrote to him while he was away, he would not reply for a long time, till he was sure she was good and sorry.

So wrapped up was he in imagining the lonely and agonized letters that Jo was to send him, and telling himself that he would laugh over them, that he almost didn't hear her next words. It was lucky, however, that he did, for they helped him better comprehend her fury.

"These stories aren't how things really happen, are they?" She asked. She'd deepened her voice in that way that he knew meant she was truly worried, and her only choices where to shoulder through with as much force as possible, or else come off with as much timidity as shy little Beth.

"What now?" He responded, not very cleverly, for her question had caught her off guard.

"Well, the stories make it sound as though…as though _it_ goes on between all manner of people, in all manner of ways, and I'm not even sure what is entirely necessary for _it_ to take place, and what isn't."

Now Laurie was entirely shocked. It wasn't simply that Jo was speaking out loud and almost frankly about something which he had never imagined speaking about with a woman, though it that would have been enough for most people. The truth was that, even knowing that his schooling far surpassed Jo's, and that he had spent much of his youth traveling Europe where she had practically never left Massachusetts, he'd never truly thought of Jo as being ignorant in any matter of importance, never imagined that she could be. If anything, he'd held her mind and her knowledge in such regard that he would have freely admitted to anybody who asked that it was sharper than his own.

"Meg's been married for some time," Laurie said. "Hasn't she told you?"

Jo shook her head, and Laurie knew beyond a doubt that for all of Jo's shrewdness, up until that morning, she had not had the slightest awareness of a certain aspect of life that young men ridiculed and glorified in turns. Further more, he realized that it fell upon him now to fill her in on the basics, and he could not decide whether this was an exciting prospect, or something too keenly embarrassing for words.

"I guess it's…mostly the same as in the magazine. Only, without nearly anything in the magazine."

Jo gave him such a quizzical look at this, that he knew he would have to explain further. "What I mean to say is…the anatomy is correct, but nearly everything else is embellishment."

This struck him as a neat explanation, and he would have been content to leave it at that, but Jo being Jo could not let things pass without hitting him with another question.

"Do you know from experience?"

This time she _did _sound shy, and nothing she could do could hide it.

"No!" Laurie exclaimed quickly. "It's merely that it's what people talk about! I think most of the lads who say though know about it first hand don't, and I don't even pretend that I do! I'm waiting for…"

Laurie stopped here, thinking that if he was entirely truthful, now was the time to say Jo's name. Even knowing that she wasn't yet ready for such an admission, Laurie was tempted.

"Marriage," he finished, lamely. "When I marry I want to know that I've done what's right by my girl, so I'll wait for now, and reap the rewards later."

"Good," Jo said, and Laurie knew that both their argument and this discussion were over. "That's exactly what you ought to be doing. For my part, I never plan to be involved in any of it, for I never am going to marry."

***

Some days after Laurie had referred to school, he heard that some of the boys were reading their magazine again, and turned away from them with something akin to smugness. They could keep their fantasies, for he had one of his own that they took no part in. He Jo would come around to marrying him one day, no matter what she currently had to say to the contrary; that much, at least, he had to believe. With that in mind he could not be much intrigued by whips, chains, paddles, or even a whole bevy of women in every shape and size. He had a real girl, and love on his mind.


End file.
